


every day, the same dream

by thir13enth



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, F/M, Guns, PTSD, implied shallura, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-21 04:56:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14908767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thir13enth/pseuds/thir13enth
Summary: Every day, he wakes up starving — like he hasn’t eaten in years.





	every day, the same dream

**Author's Note:**

> everyone's asking where's shiro and we all hope it's somewhere resting, but here i am writing this....
> 
> (also if you haven't heard of the 2009 flash short game that shares the same title as this piece, i would recommend you do so (and maybe watch a play through too -- it takes 4.5 minutes on 2x speed). it's kinda interesting.)

Today, he wakes up starving — like he hasn’t eaten in years.

He clutches his stomach, wincing, and notices his tank top is drenched in sweat and his blankets and sheets have been kicked down to the floor.

A nightmare?

He grimaces, swinging his legs off his mattress and standing to his feet. He bends back down and throws the bedding back onto the mattress where they belong, not bothering to straighten out his bed. Clumsily, he stumbles to the other side of his studio, letting the blood come back into his head as he waits for the black curtain over his vision to fade. He reaches forward for the handle of the refrigerator, opening it wide.

The cold air wafts over his body. There’s nothing in the refrigerator.

He swallows, feeling the edge of another growl in his stomach coming. His mouth fills with bitter spit. He needs to get something in him before he drops dead.

He spots an empty cup on the counter, next to an orange prescription bottle. He steps forward, taking the bottle in his left hand and reading over the instructions:

Take once daily.

Right. He takes this every day in the morning.

He shakes the bottle, seeing one small blue pill rattling around inside. He looks back at the glass cup, seeing some dried trails of water around its rim. He thinks briefly, then rinses out the glass in the sink, and fills it with tap water. He slams the bottle down onto the counter, his left palm over the cap, and twists his wrist. The bottle opens with a satisfying click, and he tips the remaining pill into his bottle, washing it down with a few gulps of water.

He looks around his room, his head still pounding. He feels hungover, but there is no trace of alcohol in the anywhere. He must have been out late, or something.

There’s a paper on the desk, and he staggers over to it, reading it:

Doctor appointment today.

Things start to clear in his mind. He thinks slowly to himself, making a list in his head as he falls back to his bed. He sits back onto the mattress and falls to his side, staring at the wall in front of him. What does he need to do today? See the doctor, refill his prescriptions, and get some fucking food for the refrigerator…

“Shiro.”

He closes his eyes, smothers his face in one hand, and groans. Fuck, what is this voice in his head? _Who_ is this voice? Why does she call his name like she knows him, like she _has_ known him?

And suddenly her voice, so close —

“Shiro?”

His reaction is automatic. He grabs for the gun under his pillow, offs the safety, rests his index finger on the trigger and points. In front of him, a woman with white hair, brown skin, pointed ears, and pink crescents under her eyes.

“You again,” he mutters to himself.

He keeps the gun raised high, aimed at her face. His arm shakes — but he’s sure that is because the gun is in his non-dominant hand, and not at all because she looks so damn familiar.  

She raises her hands to him, shielding herself. “Don’t shoot!” she tells him. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I never asked if you were going to,” he replies. He cocks the gun again. “Who are you?”

Her eyebrows furrow, and she gives him a glassy stare. She looks once down the barrel of the gun but immediately comes back to his eyes. She isn’t scared of him.

Why not?

Maybe there’s more to read in her eyes, but right now, his mind is too clouded to decipher it.

“Listen to me, Shiro,” she continues calmly. “You’re not in a good place right now. I’m here to help you get out.”

“Help me?”

“Yes,” she affirms, nodding her head. “We don’t have much time,” she says, stepping toward him. “We have to go. Come with me.”

He frowns. “You never answered my question. Who are you?”

She bites her bottom lip. “A friend,” she replies. “Now, come on. Get up.”

She takes another step toward him, entering the limits of his personal space. He leans back into his bed and waves his gun in front of her as reminder.

“Who are you?” he repeats.

“We don’t have time for this,” she urges. “I don’t have much quintessence left, and we still have to get you out of here.”

“Here?”

She inhales sharply. “You’re stuck between two planes of reality right now. Like you’re in limbo. You’ve been stuck here for many phoebs.”

He lets his gun fall onto his lap, but keeps his finger on the trigger. “I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“I’ve been trying to get you back,” she explains, a little more desperately. “For a long time now.” Her hands clasp together. “Please, just listen to me, Shiro. Please.”

“You even know my name,” he groans, getting up from his bed. He slips past the woman and walks to the window. He stares outside for a moment, passively watching the traffic and the pedestrians walking on the sidewalk four or five stories below.

He turns his head back to her. She looks back at him with a somewhat confused expression.

He translates for her. “You’re not real,” he tells her, tapping the side of his forehead with his gun. “You’re just in my head.”

Her eyes widen. “No, _no_ , I’m real,” she says. “You’re real, too. But this… _place_ that you’re in isn’t real. You _have_ to believe me.” She steps toward him, looking beyond his shoulder. “All of this,” she continues. “This entire apartment and what’s going on outside — don’t you realize it’s the same every morning? This is just a place built out of your memories from Earth.”

He throws his gun onto the nightstand, not listening. He walks past her again, toward the bathroom. He needs to get ready. He recites his plans for the day in his head again: See the doctor, refill his prescriptions, and get some fucking food for the refrigerator…

“Shiro,” she calls for him, following behind him.

He reaches for the jacket that hangs messily over the back of a chair, hanging it over his shoulder. The faster he leaves, the faster he escapes these illusions. His apartment is haunted of them.

“Shiro,” she says again, voice stronger. He doesn’t respond, walking around her again to head to the door. “Shiro! Please! Listen to me!”

She reaches out for him, grasping his wrist — but then immediately retracting her hand back to her body when she misses, suddenly realizing _that his right arm is not there_.

He turns around, looking at her. He sees her shocked eyes.

“I’m sorry. I forgot that you…”

He shakes his head. “Even if I did, you wouldn’t have been able to touch me anyway,” he replies. He lifts his left hand and shoots it out in front of him, through her torso. His hand completely goes through her, and her body flickers. “See?” he continues, pulling his hand back. “You’re not real.”

“No, no, Shiro, I… I just… I’m _real_ but I’m projecting myself into this plane. It’s why you can hear and see me. But my physical body isn’t there,” she explains. She hesitates, and then adds, “And the last time I saw you, you had a prosthetic. You weren’t proud of it, but it was another hand I could hold.”

He considers her points, tilting his head to the side. Rationalization is a technique he’s been taught to effectively ward off the unreal. If he outreasons them, they will break and never bother him again.

“So, by your logic, there wouldn’t be a point in trying to reach out for my arm in the first place,” he replies simply.

“I know,” she says, swallowing. “I… I’m trying everything I can. I wish I had enough power to touch you, but this is the limit of my power and ultimately this is a place you’ll need to convince yourself to get out of.” She looks up at him, and he thinks he sees tears along the rims of her eyes. Her voice trembles. “I can help you with everything else, but first I need you to be convinced that this… _all this around you isn’t real_. I don’t know where your real body is, but I was able to locate your soul, and it’s stuck here. We just have to get your mind out of his space and then you can come back to us… back to Voltron… to _me_.”

His mouth twists, unable to pick apart her story. “You’re not making sense,” he finally says, giving up. “I lost my arm in war.” His voice lowers. “I’m not planning on losing my mind either.”

“You have to believe me! Please!” she begs him again. “I just need you to concentrate on what you _remember_ , not what’s around you. Remember the Black Lion? Remember Keith, Lance, Pidge, Hunk, Coran? Remember _me_?”

He looks at her for a long time. “No,” he replies.

And perhaps that’s the right answer, because once he says this, her body fades into the morning light until he’s standing with no one but himself.

.

.

“You’ve been keeping up with your medications,” his doctor says.

Shiro nods, resting his forearm on his left thigh. He sits on the edge of his chair, tapping both his feet onto the ground every now and then.

“Why don’t you make yourself comfortable?” When Shiro looks up, his doctor motions with a hand. “Sit back a bit. We’re not going anywhere soon.”

He shakes his head. “It’s okay. I’m good,” he replies. He looks down at the floor, following the ridges of the hardwood floor.

“You seem tense,” the doctor observes. “How’s your sleep?”

“I’m sleeping,” he replies.

“Nightmares?”

He shrugs. “I don’t think so. I don’t remember.”

The doctor nods, jotting something down on a notepad. “That’s better than the last time you checked in. What about hallucinations?”

Shiro flinches. “What about them?”

“Are you still experiencing them?”

He thinks back to this morning. “Yeah…” he replies.

“Do you want to talk about them?”

He stumbles on the words. “No… it’s just… things saying that this isn’t real.”

“What’s not real?”

“…Everything.”

“Who’s telling you that? Your voice or someone else’s?”

“Someone else… I don’t know her.”

He doesn’t add any more detail.

“I see,” the doctor replies after a moment. “These kinds of experiences are very normal in people living with PTSD.”

“I know.”

Some more silence passes. “You mentioned you keep a gun at your bedside. We talked a little bit about that last time.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I… I know nothing is going to happen but it’s just for my own comfort.”

“I understand,” his doctor says. “I do need to ask if you store it in a safe place, however. Or if you use gun locks.”

Briefly, he remembers how automatically he pulled out his gun this morning and pointed it at a woman that meant him no harm.

“No,” he admits, and then adds, “I need to do that.”

The doctor nods. “You were talking about phantom pain last time. Are you still experiencing that?”

Shiro looks down to his right side, where no right forearm lay on his lap. “Not really,” he replies. “Just every now and then it feels like something brushes against it.”

He doesn’t mention that _he actually felt it_ when the woman from his hallucination grasped his wrist.

It was the only reason he knew she reached out to touch him in the first place — the only reason why he turned around and didn’t just walk out the door.

His doctor hums in understanding. “That’s also very normal.”

Is it?

Is it normal his hallucinations become more real as the days pass? Is it normal that his hallucinations remind him on a daily basis that the world he is living in is not real?

Either he’s becoming more crazy or more sane.

He can’t tell the difference.

.

.

When he returns home, he carefully looks around the room to search for any trace of a woman with white hair, brown skin, pointed ears, and pink crescents under her eyes.

Nothing.

He takes a slow breath in and out. She was just a fucking hallucination.

He throws his things onto the counter — the refilled prescriptions and some granola bars he picked up from the pharmacy on his way back — before he tosses off his jacket onto the back of a chair and throws himself back into bed.

Will he ever be free? How long will it take for him to recover? How long until these nightmares and these illusions go away? How long until Allura —

Allura?

Why does that name suddenly come to him? Who is that? How does he know that name?

The answer never comes to him, but he eventually falls asleep.

.

.

Today, he wakes up starving — like he hasn’t eaten in years.

He clutches his stomach, wincing, and notices his tank top is drenched in sweat and his blankets and sheets have been kicked down to the floor.

A nightmare?

**Author's Note:**

> btw I never specified a gender for Shiro’s doctor. ;)
> 
> anyway, hmu. i'll be screaming about s6 when the time comes  
> tumblr @ahumanintraining  
> twitter @napsbeforesleep


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